In wireless local area networks (WLAN), network stations may use a channel access mechanism and a control mechanism to protect transportation of packets over the network. An example of an access mechanism may be a Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) and, more specifically, CSMA/CA with a binary exponential backoff method. A Request To Send/Clear To Send (RTS/CTS) protection mechanism included in the CSMA/CA mechanism may be used to protect packet transportation.
Some “802.11g stations”, i.e., stations operating in accordance with the 802.11g standard, may use the RTS/CTS protection mechanism to protect an “OFDM data packet”, i.e., a data packet modulated using Orthogonal Frequency Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation, from collision with a transmission of a “legacy station”, e.g., a station operating in accordance with the 802.11b standard. Other “802.11g stations” may use a CTS-to-self protection mechanism to protect the “OFDM data packet”.
This may result in a reduced communication throughput, since the protection mechanism may include transmitting RTS and/or CTS packets at a transmission rate for Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum/Complementary Code Keying (DSSS/CCK), which may be lower than a transmission rate used for transmitting the OFDM data packet.
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